Collaboration is crucial for innovative cancer treatment

As the NHS faces a growing backlog and labor shortages, cancer care is suffering. At the beginning of June, the Research published by the Royal College of Radiologists (RCR) survey of 60 cancer center managers in the UK, which found that understaffing in 97% of centers was leading to longer waiting times and delays in treatment.

Indeed, workforce capacity has been recognized as a key challenge in NHS cancer services. “This has long been a problem across the UK, but the pandemic has again cast a spotlight on a strained healthcare system,” says Scott Cooke, managing director of UK and Ireland at biopharmaceutical company Bristol. Myers Squibb (BMS). Last year, BMS commissioned an analysis from the Office of Health Economics (OHE) which found that even if activity in cancer services increased by 2.5%, clearing the backlog could take almost ten years in parts of the UK.

However, innovation is progressing at a steady pace. In June, the Blood test gallery – which can detect more than 50 types of cancer at an early stage by looking for abnormal DNA – showed positive results in an NHS trial. It correctly identified two out of three cancers among 5,000 people who had visited their GP with suspicious symptoms in England or Wales.

But widespread adoption of new diagnostic tests and treatments is being held back by an understaffed system. “Given the rapid and continuous pace of innovation in cancer treatment, it is essential that opportunities for large-scale collaboration with the NHS are generated,” says Cooke. “An overburdened cancer control workforce needs protected time and support to embrace and integrate innovation.”

“NHS people don’t have a head for innovation,” adds Dr Richard Simcock, an oncology clinician and chief medical officer at cancer charity Macmillan. “People are optimistic about pursuing exciting innovations, but pessimistic about their ability to deliver them due to workforce pressures.”

Collaboration across sectors is crucial to tackle issues such as labor shortages, late diagnoses and inequitable access to new treatments. “We need synergies to improve care,” he says.

Therefore, Macmillan has partnered with BMS to create two innovative tools that aim to improve cancer patient outcomes, currently being piloted in NHS trusts. The first is a workforce planning tool, which assesses a trust’s existing skill mix and the resources it will need to deliver future processing innovations. It cuts costs by identifying retraining opportunities, rather than just focusing on recruiting new employees. The tool will help clinicians plan their time by looking at the “downstream impacts” of new treatments, Simcock says, such as the resources needed for follow-up clinical care and investigations.

The second tool is a “prehabilitation” method, which prepares cancer patients for non-surgical treatments through advice and support on diet, exercise and psychological well-being. This aims to improve post-treatment outcomes, for example by reducing hospital stays and the risk of urgent care, also saving the NHS money and reducing the backlog.

“The prehab case has been relatively well proven in surgery,” says Simcock. “But non-surgical cancer treatments like immunotherapy are also extremely physiologically stressful.” Exhaustion is a common side effect, and lifestyle interventions such as exercise can be very effective in addressing it.

“If we can get a person to be healthier before and during treatment, we know they’ll likely recover faster and better, and start living a fuller, more normal life again,” he adds.

Politics can play a key role in the diffusion of innovation. Simcock says he is “extremely disappointed” that the ten-year cancer plan, proposed by former health secretary Sajid Javid, has been replaced by a major disease strategy.

However, there is room for improvement – the cross-party health and care committee recently launched an inquiry into the future of cancer care, which will explore innovation in diagnosis and treatment. Strong recommendations to government will help ensure innovation is “evenly distributed, paced and continuously embedded in the healthcare system”, Cooke said.

Collaboration with the life sciences industry should be at the heart of these, he says. Measures to address inequities in patient outcomes and access to treatment must also be prioritized, to ensure that “existing gaps are not simply exacerbated” as cancer services shrink. improve.

The new Department of Science, Innovation and Technology (DSIT) also shows promise in prioritizing medical innovation. DSIT recently published the UK Science and Technology Framework, a strategy to make the UK a science and technology ‘superpower’, and life sciences is a core tenet of this.

To deliver on this ambition, there needs to be cross-departmental work to improve the UK’s position in carrying out clinical trials and drug development, says Cooke. Between 2018 and 2021, the UK fell from fourth to tenth place in the world as a place to conduct clinical trials, and the time between obtaining marketing authorization and patient disposition has increased and is now 329 days in England.

“Clinical trials give patients access to potentially life-changing treatments at no extra cost to the NHS,” says Cooke. “[In terms of] By making licensed products available to patients, we know that results are better the earlier a person is diagnosed and treated.

From workforce planning tools to multi-cancer blood tests, new methods can help patients while reducing the burden on the NHS. But their widespread adoption cannot rely solely on clinicians working in an already strained system.

“[NHS staff] are exhausted and exhausted,” Simcock says of Macmillan. “We need to bring people and businesses together and the third sector has more time, space and capital to do that.”

Approval Code: June 2023 | ONC-GB-2300314

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